plus ca change

We Hope for Better Things by Erin Bartels
Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction/historical fiction
Review: Reading this book is a little bit like viewing history through a kaleidoscope; as you turn the wheel, the colors shift slightly to make a different picture, but one that is made up of the same elements as the one before.  Bartels writes vividly across three storylines, each taking place in a different time.  The three time periods (1861-75, 1963-7, and modern time) blend and separate as each tell a story about racism and family.

Mary unwittingly and then wholeheartedly opens her home to escaping slaves during the Civil War.  Her granddaughter Nora must face the realities of racism when she falls in love with and marries a black photographer.  Elizabeth, Nora's great-niece, and an aspiring journalist, thinks she's found the story of a lifetime when she's given a camera to return to this aunt she's never met.  The story of each woman echoes the others as they search for the truth of themselves, their family, and its history.

Because there is a generation missing between Mary and Nora, and between Nora and Elizabeth, some of the past remains hidden, and Bartels avoids several opportunities to wrap everything up with a neat bow.  Usually, loose ends at the end of a book make me crazy, but Bartels demonstrates her gifts as a writer by making even this seem like a natural part of the story.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

everything and the kitchen sink

The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)
Genre: science fiction
Review:  Kate Mascarenhas has found an interesting approach to writing a time travel novel.  As the title indicates, she's exploring what happens to a time traveler's brain and to their personality when they move through time.  In her world, the answer is: nothing good.  Among other mental infirmities that can develop, frequent time travel can cause people to become desensitized to and crass about death.  This can be a major problem, and how to tackle that problem and make time travel psychologically safe is an interesting entre into the genre.

Unfortunately, Mascarenhas has bitten off a bit more than she can chew, in what is clearly a debut novel.  She's wrapped this question in a mystery and layered it with an enormous bureaucracy that governs everything related to time travel, travelers (sometimes the same person) coming from both directions, and a full cast of non-time travelers. The mystery gets sort of forgotton for a while in the middle while we deal with the characters, and by the time we get back to it, I don't really care about the who's or why's of it.  And I couldn't even keep track of the characters, and all their various timely incarnations, let alone care much about any of them.

Still, there are hints of Mascarenhas's strengths as a writer.  Some of the characters are quite well-written, and parts of the action really hum along.  If she chooses to write another book, perhaps she'll be able to mellow out a little and let her talents shine through.

FTC Disclaimer: I recieved this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

two out of three ain't bad

Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: science fiction
Review: Writing a time travel novel is kind of like writing a vampire novel - there are certains rules that must be followed, but other than that, the only thing an author must do is create a world with internal cohesion.  Mike Chen has definitely created a world that holds together.  His time travel agents have strict rules they must follow in order to prevent the timeline from corruption, and even the more technical explanations (of things like the "grandfather paradox") are eminently understandable.

Unfortunately, his characters and their relationships don't get the same attention.  At first, I thought the lack of depth in the future was deliberate, to reflect Kin's initial feelings of disconnect when he returns to his own time, but I didn't begin to feel more connected to those characters as he apparently did.  We're told that his feelings return for his fiancee return, but never really shown it.  On the other hand, the present-day characters felt much more fleshed out, but we don't actually have much interaction with them once Kin returns to the future.

So, it's a plus for world-building, a negative for characters, and there's another plus for the actual action of the story.  Kin's various attempts to reconnect with and then save his daughter shine through with his intensity, and Chen's determination to stay within the rules that he's created add a sense of urgency and truth to his actions.  If you do the math, world-building + action - character development = an eminently readable book, if not one of the best time travel books I've ever read.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

what holds us together?

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: Often, when I get to the end of a book, I'm left wanting to know what happens to the characters after the last page.  Much less frequently, do I feel the need to know about what happened before the first page.  But that was how I felt with this book.  What happened to get this family into this predicament?  Some of it was ancient history, some more recent, some became very clear, but a lot stayed very hazy in my mind.  I get that the details of the past may not have been the point, but I think a little more history would have helped me to understand the characters actions and reactions and why certain things have meaning.  It is clear that Gray's characters are all very much alive in her mind, but I had trouble getting them to come alive for me.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.